The “Three Decker” is a curious sort of
architecture that has flourished mainly in Boston, though sometimes seen
elsewhere. It was originally designed as a form of tenement house―a
three-story wooden house with balconies on each floor (usually in back, but
sometimes front and back) which are exactly alike, and with a flat roof. The
title came from the fancied resemblance of these porches to the decks of a
liner. Many single-family houses in some parts of the city are designed in
imitation of the three-decker’s lines: while Worcester has outdone itself with a
brick building looking exactly like Boston’s three-deckers down to the last
detail.

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Boston has very few cases of what is so
frequent in other cities, that is, streets being interrupted for a while, only
to resume under the same name further on. In the West, such interruptions and
resumptions are very common, and represent parts of streets planned but not
built. The same is true in the District of Columbia, where there are cases of
streets interrupted and resuming four or five times. Most maps of those places
represent the planned but uncompleted course of the streets by dotted lines.
Boston is almost free from this nuisance. There are exceptions; for instance,
Metropolitan Avenue in Hyde Park stops at the Neponset River, and resumes at the
farther side of the river. But, on the whole, Boston differs from cities in
that, once you have found the right street, you need only to follow it to your
destination.

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According to an unpublished Boston
guide-book,* the Boston Postal District includes
besides the official city, Arlington, Belmont, Braintree, Brookline, Cambridge,
Chelsea, Everett, Lexington, Malden, Medford, Melrose, Milton, Needham, Newton,
Quincy, Revere, Somerville, Stoneham, Waltham, Watertown, Wellesley, Weston,
Weymouth and Winthrop. This information may come in handy if you want to know
how much postage to put on a letter, as there is a 2˘ postage rate within this
whole district. The Boston telephone book, according to the same source, covers
not only the Postal District, but also Bedford, Canton, Cohasset, Dedham,
Hingham, Holbrook, Hull, Lincoln, Norwood, Randolph, Reading, Wakefield,
Westwood and Woburn, The Postal District―largest
in the country―covers 26 municipalities;
while the telephone district takes in an even forty.

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That church-looking building of the Exeter
Street Theater used to be a spiritualist temple some fifty years ago.

*

Washington Street is the only street in
the city that traverses Boston from waterfront to the south boundary, and to
split the city entirely in two.